Language

Human language has syntax, a set of rules for connecting words together to make statements and questions. Language can also be changed, by adding new words, for example, to describe new things. Other animals may inherit a set of calls which have pre-set functions.

Language may be done by speech or by writing or by moving the hands to make signs. It follows that language is not just any way of communicating. Even some human communication is not language: see non-verbal communication. Humans also use language for thinking.

The sounds come out in a sequence, not all at once. This is mimicked in writing, where the marks are put on the paper or screen in the same sequence.

The stream of sounds have little gaps between them, and come in bigger packages. We call the bigger packets sentences or questions or replies or comments.

In most languages, English being one, the syntax or order of the words can change the meaning: "the cat sat on the man" is different from "the man sat on the cat".

Words (which may be made up of more than one phoneme) divide up into two classes: content and non-content. Content words have meaning: nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.. Non-content words are there to make the language work: and, not, in, out, what, etc. Grammar consists of studying how words fit together to mean something.

All languages have:

sentences with two types of expression: nouns and verbs: Jill is here.

The capacity to learn and use language is inherited. Normally, all humans are born with this capability. Which language is learned by a child depends on which language is spoken by the child's community. The capacity is inherited, but the particular language is learned.

Children have a special period, from about 18 months to about four years, which is critical for learning the language. If this is seriously disrupted, then their language skills will be damaged. Older people learn differently, so they seldom learn a second language as well as they learn their native language.

Chinese is the language with the most native speakers in the world, but Chinese is not really a language. It is a close family of dialects, some of which are as different as Romance languages are from one another.

Some languages are made up so that a lot of people around the world can learn them, without the new languages being tied to any specific country or place. These are called constructed languages. One of the most popular of these languages is Esperanto, which is sometimes called "La Internacia Lingvo," or "The International Language." Another of these languages is called Volapuk, which was popular about a hundred years ago but is much less popular now. It has mostly been replaced by languages like Esperanto, Interlingua, and Ido.

Part of the reason that Volapuk became unpopular is that some sounds are hard to say for people who speak Spanish or English, two of the most widely spoken languages in the world.